Tag Archives: school

School babble (doubt anyone cares)

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I’m irritated that a student told me about a huge school-wide testing thing next week instead of my administrator. Way to help me plan my classes!

I’m scrambling to get everything done for the rest of the unit. But, through front loading a bunch of scary things in the next few days I think my kids will have time to do everything they need to do. I will have 8 days to grade 120 essays before I run off to Texas for Thanksgiving.

At least it means that I have to have absolutely everything graded and done before the essay is turned in which means that my grades will be easy to make final when all I have to do is put the essay grade in the night before I fly to Texas. Sweet. Then I can come back without having to worry about anything on my plate.

My kids in third period told me it was really good to see me laugh today. I asked if I am usually in a bad mood and they said no. Apparently me being in a full on good mood is rare though. Hm. That’s less than optimal.

I have two vocabulary test sets to grade, a set of DJs (dialectical journals–a way of responding to quotes), and three more sets of reading quizzes. Luckily I will only have two more sets of reading quizzes in this unit and then the project and the essay. I can do this over the next two weeks…

(And the icon is cause I am teaching MLA this week. 🙂

small brag

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I just read the sub log from Friday. I’ve been freaked out cause I got the awful sub. He said over and over how great and amazing my kids were and how he didn’t have to do anything to enforce discipline.

Duh. My kids wouldn’t dare.

Ok, that’s my brag for the day. 🙂

(Have I mentioned that my kids *love* me? They won’t mess up because then I get upset and ask what I have done that has let them down so much that they think that behavior is acceptable.)

I will be positive, damnit.

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Today I have a kid in class for the second time this year. I barely recognize her. I consider this a victory even though I had nothing to do with it. I have comp & lit kids borrowing: Slut, Bitch, Cutting, and a book about coming out. They are all rather sophisticated books on interesting topics despite the names. 🙂 They are doing an amazing job of reading. My kids are now keeping reading logs and their reading rate has gone up significantly. They are *reading* for 20 minutes a day without complaint or falling asleep. (Ok, once in a while someone dozes a bit, but they are usually sick or under a lot of stress.)

This is successful. I’m amazed. 🙂 I have more classroom participation than my mentor teacher can believe. She taught this class for 9 years and she is flat out shocked at how well my kids are doing. That feels so good.

I can do it. Damnit.

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I want to leave work at 3:10 tomorrow. That means I have to be done with everything for the next four school days before I can leave tonight. I’m almost done. I am hating this vocabulary list though. Then I just have to make a metric ton of copies. Hmmm. Maybe I should start on that while I am doing the vocab search. Multi tasking = working smarter not harder.

I’m getting close. And I’m tired and hungry. But I’m damn close. Maybe another… 40 minutes?

Breaking

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I cried the entire way to school. I cried so hard that technically I shouldn’t have been driving as there were minutes at a time when I couldn’t really see. And I got to school to receive a nasty email from a parent telling me that I have to give her more information. I can’t do everything that is wanted of me right now. I can’t.

All I want to do right now is self-mutilate. But that is one of the things I am not supposed to do. I want to do other various self harming things. I’m not supposed to. So I decided that I wouldn’t eat today. No one has told me I am not allowed to do that. It’ll hurt. It will make me feel physically as shitty as I do emotionally. But if I do that then I can’t do my job at all. And that isn’t allowed.

I’m going to break. I don’t know what is going to completely go, I don’t know how I am going to collapse and fail, but I am going to. I feel it.

It doesn’t seem like I am allowed to have a good day. Right now I feel so overwhelmed and helpless that I really want to do some serious self-harm. I don’t see how this is going to be a good day or a good night.

More training

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I am turning into the teaching assistant. It’s pretty funny. And he is spending an enormous amount of time on itunes. This is completely not helpful for the deaf ASL teacher sitting near me. And I ran to my car for a batch of cd’s so I’m importing them all right now. 🙂 Yay for multi-tasking. Half the class borrowed cds so they can figure out the program. Ha.

Perspective

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I can describe my life right now and say, “I go to work. I grade papers. I go to trainings. I get up way too early in the morning. I hardly ever see my friends. I spend most of my spare time working or cleaning house.”

And it’s all true. It just sounds like so much more of a downer than my life feels like. I’m working 6 days a week and usually 9-11 hour days. (Weekend training can be as short as about 4 hours. Whoo hoo!) No matter how much time I put into my job there is an infinite amount of work left to do. I vacilate hard between feeling like I am doing a good job and feeling like I am not doing as much as my kids deserve. But my comp & lit kids are doing more work than anyone has seen this kind of group do in years. My juniors are feeling challenged but they aren’t drowning. That is the balance I am searching for. I have unit plans in place for this entire grading period and that makes me feel really good. I have a lot of grading to do, but I am more up to date on it than anyone else in my department so I can’t really feel too bad about it.

I spend most of my time at home, this means I get to spend most of my time with Noah! I am continually blown away by how wonderful he is. Does this mean we always get along? Of course not–I’m a pain in the ass. But he puts up with me cheerfully and helps me figure out why I’m feeling out of sorts which means that hopefully we are making progress towards less-cranky. It’s a goal.

Our house is coming along. He is surprised at how much organizing I have done so far. Yay for kitchens with food in them! 😉 I’m really happy about the nesting process. We have probably a month or two more of work before we can start painting given that I only have a day a week to work on stuff. I’m hoping that I can do lots of work during Christmas break. It would be good.

I’m busy, stressed, tired, and happy. I guess that is all I can ask of life.

Not quite a weekend.

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Friday I came home from work and fell asleep within 20 minutes. So my Noah settled in for an evening of WoW. I don’t blame him, but given how little sleep I got all last week I was kind of cranky when I woke up two hours later and he continued playing for two hours after I woke up. Enh, such is life. I feel really guilty when I am cranky but we usually end up talking about good stuff. He rocks so hard.

Saturday I got up at my normal 6am. I got dressed and went off to a work training in a fairly serious bad mood. It did turn into being probably the best training I have ever gone to so by 20 minutes in I was over my unhappiness. I got some really good stuff. After the training I went to my school and did cleaning, organizing and lesson planning all day. My cutie baby came and spent time in the room with me and we got to talk a little. He rocks! After grading papers I got to chaperone a dance. At the dance many of my kids were total jerks and I felt very disappointed in their behavior. 🙁 So today I have been talking to the kids and telling them why their behavior wasn’t cool. They are taking the lecture pretty well.

Sunday we cleaned house and did grocery shopping. Noah did a *fabulous* job of cleaning the refrigerator. 🙂 It was awful. Our kitchen is about as blacksheep_lj modified as it is going to get and boy howdy am I grateful. 🙂 We were totally dead by 8 and struggled to stay up till 9 so I wouldn’t wake up too terribly early this morning. With the addition of 5-htp (my moods have sucked lately) I had some really awesome dreams. I rescued my “sister” (not my actual sister but some person who was my sister in the dream) from a middle eastern prison by suspending myself from a high window and lowering myself to the room she was in. (For some reason they used a high rise building as a jail. I think it wasn’t a real prison but she was a political prisoner in some random government building.) It was cool. In another dream I was wandering around a city in Africa with karenbynight and she was pregnant. That was really odd. I know I had a few other odd dreams but I can’t remember them right now.

And this morning I got to wake up and talk to my mother-in-law. She drops hostile comments about Noah into the conversation at various points and that makes me sad. Stuff like, “All of us did cartwheels when he moved out of state and we hope he never comes back,” and, “His brothers are so glad they don’t have to deal with him daily anymore,” and they really made me sad. 🙁 I’m going to think about how best to let her know I don’t want to listen to her slam Noah. If she dislikes him so intently maybe we shouldn’t come back at all? 🙁 I know he is so incredibly wonderful that I feel sorry for her that she doesn’t know.

It’s a day.

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Boy howdy. I woke up a serious Mrs. (holy shit) CrankyPants. Wait… does that make Noah Mrs. CrankyPants? 🙂 Everything made me cry. We forgot to put food in the refrigerator last night, I couldn’t get email to work right, and I started freaking out about a work problem. So I cried and wasn’t very nice. 🙁 Noah told me I wasn’t allowed to say bad things about his wife though. I’m working on it.

Making copies was a hassle cause the machine in my building is broken. Erf.

But in 2nd period I gave my kiddos a little psuedo inspirational speech (we had a bad day on Wednesday) and they worked their asses off all period. I feel much more happy with them than I did earlier this week.

3rd period is taking the monster test. A few people have finished a little early (one chick is just totally going to fail, another couple are probably going to do well) but overall they are busting ass to get it done. Last night was the all-nighter to decorate for Homecoming stuff and they are seriously wasted. I’m impressed with how hard they are working anyway. I also had a kid bring me an apple. 🙂

I’m trying really hard to rally my craptastic mood. The kids are being so good.

Thank you baby for being nice to me when I am not being very nice.

Carry a big stick.

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I am positively *gleeful* right now.

One of the other teachers in my department was gone Thursday and Friday and she is absent again today. On Friday the sub got fired for gross incompetence because the class was totally out of control. We have no sub plans for today. I called her and got an idea of what she wanted then filled in the blanks with other stuff I think is appropriate. (I teach the same class.)

I put an overhead up in my class telling my kids to come in quietly, get out their books, and continue from where we left off on Friday.

I then went to the other classroom, put the agenda on the board, and read the class the riot act for a few minutes about how their behavior was utterly unacceptable and if they get out of line today they will have a stack of referals waiting, calls to their parents, and detentions for weeks to come on top of an apology letter. I told them that they lost their talking privilege and if anyone said even one word they were to be sent to my room to await punishment.

The sub said the kids barely breathed all period. They did their work quietly and were very respectful when they talked to him.

And when I came back into my room my perfect angels were reading the play and everyone was following along and being great. *grin* And I get to do this two more times today. Apparently I don’t need those classroom management seminars I am going to later this week.

cranky

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Every Friday we do a communal lunch thing in my department. And today… everything has onions in it. So I don’t have a lunch and the lunch being provided is stuff I won’t eat.

I’m going to be so cranky by the end of school. I’m eating granola bars and nuts and pretzels, but it isn’t going to be quite enough. 🙁

Welcome to the educational system

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I suppose this is what I get for all that time skipping school. I wasn’t exposed to as many varieties of illness so now I am getting sick left and right. My stomach and intestinal track hate me.

I offered the little darlings 5 points for the day if I don’t have to yell at anyone. 🙂 Basically, I asked them to show me mercy. We’ll see how it goes.

Ok, honestly–I anticipate good results. I am very understanding of people not feeling well in general and I tend to help them out when they aren’t at their best. Lots of leeway and such.

Ooooooh! And they are getting out books when they finish their tests WITHOUT PROMPTING!!! Ok, even though I feel like I was hit by a truck I anticipate a good day. *happy finger dance of joy which does not require upseting my stomach*

{insecurity} Tired

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An idea was tossed out last night which I am going to be right about in the long run. Not a terrible thing.

Lately I have been having the sleep schedule from hell. I wake up at 6am which means I need to go to bed fairly early. And seeing as I am married to a conversation studmuffin (I wish I had a link handy to the comic, but I suck.) this means I need to head to bed even before I need to fall asleep. The goal was to have time for sex as well but I’m lame and exhausted most of the time. 🙁 I am getting awesome snuggles though.

I’m feeling drained and beaten down even though I am generally happy. I feel like I don’t have the storehouses of energy reserves that allow me to handle any extra stress. So I cancelled working at the Folsom Fringe event because I am just too fucking tired. We are cancelling this weekends Disneyland trip mainly for financial reasons (and hey–we’re going in December), but honestly I feel so much relief that I won’t have to deal with it energy wise. I miss my friends but I feel too tired to do anything. Don’t get me wrong–I love my life. I really love my job and the mellowness that is happening with Noah is great. I just feel pretty sharply the difference in how social I used to be. I’m used to lots of social contact and playing and seeing people and I’m having trouble adjusting.

I probably could do more than I do, I just feel… drained. Being anti-social seems necessary for the forseeable future. I need to get a bit further ahead in lesson planning. I need to find a rhythm for grading papers that allows me to get it done and doesn’t stress me out. I need to figure out a system for getting chores done. I need to get my house to a level where I don’t feel anxious about it. So many needs. I wonder when I can get back to wants.

{school} What I missed last year.

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I had this idea on presentations of material to prep the kids for The Crucible so I put it together and I ran with it yesterday. The first group of kids did ok, but there were some big obvious kinks. So I redid it today fixing the problems and it was smooth as butter. The kidlets are doing an *awesome* job and I am so proud of them.

Oh! And I did good! I figured out that one of my comp & lit kids should be in English 3. She should not be in the stepladder class between English 1 and English 2. Turns out it was a scheduling error and they are going to fix it. I’m glad I was paying attention. 🙂 (Though this means I have to pay more attention in the future out of paranoia… darn it!)

Tales from the classroom

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Just so that ya’ll know that I am not just obsessed with my romantic life…

The year has started well. I’ve had kidlets for two weeks and I’m already a little sad that I only get them for 172 more days. 🙁 That isn’t enough time.

I seem to have a generally good crop of kids. Comp & Lit is not terribly motivated, but they seem to be willing to work when I tell them to. We are working on motivation though. It’s a goal. My English 3 classes are generally decent. I have a couple of talkers in each class and a few lazy snots, but not many. Mostly we seem to be warming up to one another. It is kind of funny that if I have an awful day with one period the next day they are super great. I know that a lot of it depends on my own attitude on a given day, and I am trying very hard to work on that. I’ve only had to yell at three kids so far and they have been good since. Yay! Although my aide has detention on Tuesday because the shit won’t carry the classroom pass when he runs errands. (He earned this today. Cause I just got the pass *today*. I had him last year and so we get along and have lots of struggles with “who is in charge.” S’all good though.)

We start Writers Workshop today and I have their assessment packets finally. I get to do my first round of big grading this afternoon. It’s so exciting! heh. The pile is somewhat intimidating when I have this many students… It’ll be good though. I have confidence in them!

In block letters across the front of my room I tacked up: “Today is the first day of the rest of your life! What do you want to accomplish?” I ask different kids to respond to it almost every day. I’m getting some good answers and some smart ass answers. It’s a good tool though. I don’t know all of their names yet. I know about half. *sigh* That is not enough! I know the talkers and the ones with weird names. I’m having trouble with my 4 Breanna/Briana/Breanas. And I have 5 Michaels. And Kelsey/Chelsey/Kaylee/Cayleigh. And three Ashley/Ashleighs. Oy. Guess what names I won’t pick for my kids? The weird thing is–I feel awkward about talking about the really cool and unique names because that feels like I’m saying too much about a person. How odd.

But it’s going well. I am a full month ahead on planning for English 3 and I’m only two days ahead on Comp & Lit but the district is giving me textbook training on Tuesday and it seems dumb to go far ahead…